Background
The Confederation League (which included such figures as Amor De Cosmos, John Robson, and Robert Beaven) led the chorus pressing for the colony to join Canada, which had been created out of three British North American colonies in 1867 (the Province of Canada, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick). Several factors motivated this drive—fear of annexation by the United States, overwhelming debt created by rapid population growth, the need for government-funded services to support this population, and the economic depression caused by the end of the gold rush. With the agreement by the Canadian government to extend the Canadian Pacific Railway to British Columbia and to assume the colony's debt, British Columbia became the sixth province to join Confederation on 20 July 1871. The borders of the province were not completely settled until 1903, however, when the province's territory shrank somewhat after the Alaska boundary dispute settled the vague boundary of the Alaska Panhandle.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Pacific Railway In British Columbia
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